The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
Red contrasting with
the greener fields, blue sky, and
dark or downy clouds.
The wood thrush answers
the unexhausted morning
vigor of the hearer.
At Hubbard's meadow
sunshine lights the trunk and limbs
of a swamp white oak.
What a wholesome red!
I am struck with the beauty
of the sorrel now.
June 12, 2016
June 12, 2018
June 12, 2019
June 12, 2020
It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, but not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon. Who knows how much lighter day there may be? June 12, 1852
There would be this advantage in travelling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would make fewer travellers' mistakes. June 12, 1851
The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art. June 12, 1853
The mouse-ear forget me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest. June 12, 1852
The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers. It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets. June 12, 1852
Sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. June 12, 1852
Clover now reddens the fields. June 12, 1854
I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now. . . . What a wholesome red! . . . There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season. June 12, 1859
The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. June 12, 1852
Senecio vulgaris a common weed, apparently in prime. June 12, 1857
A Carya tomentosa hickory on the hill well out, and froth on the nuts, almost all out and black; perhaps three or four days. June 12, 1855
I see a young yellow-spot turtle in the Assabet, still quite broad and roundish though I count about seven striæ. It is very handsome. June 12, 1860
Up Assabet. I find several Emys insculpta nests and eggs, and see two painted turtles going inland to lay at 3 P. M. June 12, 1860
Here is a painted turtle just a rod inland, its back all covered with the fragments of green leaves blown off and washed up yesterday, which now line the shore. It has come out through this wrack. June 12, 1860
Visited the great orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. It is emphatically a flower (within gunshot of the hawk's nest); its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp. June 12, 1853
The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially. June 12, 1852
The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears (?) June 12, 1853
Sidesaddle flower numerously out now. June 12, 1856
In a hedge thicket by meadow near Peter’s Path, a catbird’s nest, one egg; as usual in a high blueberry, in the thickest and darkest of the hedge, and very loosely built beneath on joggle-sticks. June 12, 1855
In a high blueberry bush, on the Poplar Hill-side, four feet from ground, a catbird’s nest with four eggs, forty feet high up the hill. They even follow the blueberry up-hill. June 12, 1855
A field sparrow’s nest with three young, on a Vaccinium vacillans, rose, and grass, six inches from ground, made of grass and hair. June 12, 1855
Do I not see two birds with the seringo note, — the Savannah (?) sparrow, larger with not so bright a yellow over eye, none on wing, and white breast, and beneath former streaked with dark and perhaps a dark spot, and the smaller yellow-winged, with spot on wing also and ochreous breast and throat ? The first sings che che rar, che ra- a-a-a-a-ar. June 12, 1854
In the thick swamp behind the hill I look at the vireo’s nest which C. found on the 10th, within reach on a red maple forked twig, eight feet from ground. June 12, 1855
The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods. June 12, 1853
Near by, in a part of the swamp which had been cleared and then burnt apparently by accident, we find the nest of a veery on a tussock eight inches high, which like those around has been burnt all off close and black. The nest is directly in the top, the outside burnt. It contains three eggs, which have been scorched, discolored, and cooked, — one cracked by the heat, though fresh. Some of the sedge has since sprung up green, eight inches high, around here and there. All the lower part of the nest is left, an inch thick with dead leaves, —maple, etc., —and well lined with moss stems (?). It is a dry swamp. June 12, 1855
Hear the evergreen-forest note, and see the bird on the top of a white pine , somewhat creeper like, along the boughs, and golden head except a black streak from eyes, black throat, slate-colored back, forked tail , white beneath, er te, ter ter te. Another bird with yellow throat near by may have been the other sex. June 12, 1854
Young red-wings now begin to fly feebly amid the button-bushes, and the old ones chatter their anxiety. At mouth of Mill Brook, a red-wing’s nest . . . with four eggs variously marked, full of young. June 12, 1855
Scare a kingfisher on a bough over Walden. As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives and apparently catches a fish, with which he flies off low over the water to a tree. June 12, 1854
Apparently a small pewee nest on apple in Miles’s meadow. Bird on, and not to be frightened off, though I throw sticks and climb the tree to near her. June 12, 1856
I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. He sits close to the edge of the water and is hard to find—hard to tell the direction, though you may be within three feet. I detect him chiefly by the motion of the great swelling bubble in his throat. A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! How serenely it ripples over the water! What a luxury life is to him! I have to use a little geometry to detect him. Am surprised at my discovery at last, while C. sits by incredulous. Had turned our prow to shore to search. This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds. June 12, 1855
At 7. 30 P. M. I hear many toads, it being a warm night, but scarcely any hylodes. June 12, 1860
The note of the wood thrush answers to some cool unexhausted morning vigor in the hearer. June 12, 1853
Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear. June 12, 1851
See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:
June 12, 2019
If you make the least correctobservation of nature this year,you will have occasion to repeat itwith illustrations the next,and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 12A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau"A book, each page written in its own season,out-of-doors, in its own locality."~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2023
https://tinyurl.com/HDT12June
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